Hey, it's me again! I managed to improve the performance on the Tree Scatter (could work with others). I used the "Realize Intances" node right before the group output, it essentially merges all instances in as one object, it only reduces the amount of objects, the polys and materials are the same, but the simple fact of having many objects was killing performance. The good thing is that it's neither destructive nor hard to setup, in one of my scenes I went from 130k objects to 1 object on an area of 300x400 meters (trees only). PS: I said it could work for others but it already does, didn't had noticed you shared the same GeoNode between the different scatters
Wow! I just tested this and it can be a huge improvement for viewport performance. Technically it makes the modifier itself slower, because it has to merge everything, but once that's done the scene draws much faster. I'll have to experiment with this a bit more and see how it effects rendertimes, etc. but adding a 'Realize' checkbox to the modifier is a good idea.
Happy to help! I had encountered this node when I was trying to help my performance on my interior GeoNode setup with corridors and a lot of instanced parts.@@looseEdges
Very handy. Looking forward to using this along with DJH nodes. You make the coolest promo videos for your products and have by far the best organized and clear documentation on your site. This was one of those "full confidence" purchase decisions.
Thanks! To make a winter scene, I would mainly use a different material. I might try to add one in a future update, in the meantime you might check this video about custom materials: th-cam.com/video/A8B5AR-R9xk/w-d-xo.html
This is really amazing. I used DAZ in Unreal but this Terra Node is somewhat similar or more convenient to make terrain at your wish. Couple it with G-scatter or Ngon addon and it will give you proper exterior in no time.
Dear, The problem is that you are explaining to experts. The problem is what about beginners? I have spent the whole day learning how to install it and find the libraries since I bought the add-on. You are explaining like someone who is talking to himself. so we need to explain it step by step. thanks for your great efforts
This is awesome! got as soon as I discovered it and works flawlessly! The only issue I am having is that for some reason I can't make it interact properly with lights and hdri (cycles) could be that I am doing something terribly wrong
Glad to hear it! That is odd, I just did a quick test and a terrain with cycles seems to be working fine for me. Was there a specific material that was causing the issue? Also feel free to join my discord server, ( discord.gg/EuUHutzrJr ), that way you could share pictures etc.
This is amazing. Bought it as soon as I saw the demo! Quick question: I can scatter biomes onto the TerraNode landscape with GeoScatter quite nicely, however it doesn't respect the masking in TN. Can you think of any way to get access to the masks being generated by TN so I can use them to cull biomes in Geo-Scatter? Thanks
All the extra TerraNode data is saved as named attributes. I'm not familiar with the GeoScatter workflow, so I'm afraid I can't speak to that much. However, if it uses Geometry Nodes, I'd reccomend taking a look inside my Terrain Attributes Shader Node. There, you can see all the attributes that can be read from a TerraNode terrain. A copy of that shader node, made for GeoNodes, would give you access to all the terrain data.
Both the workflow and the final result looks fantastic. I hope you will find a way to export the terrain to Unity. Can you please notify in some way whenever you manage to?
Thanks! Yes, exporting the result is what I want to experiment with next. I will probably make a video about that once I have figured out a good workflow.
Looks amazing, just kinda sad that the road erode does like the Erode Modifier, the miss aligned height, something that doesn't seem to happen on your video.
Okay managed to get rid of it but had to go with 70m instead of your 55m and cut it down to 50m. Also so you know, Optix Rendering isn't possible with your addon, way too complex for it.
Ah bummer, I thought I had eliminated that problem, I'll look into it again and try to improve it. It's caused by points of the road curve that are beyond the extents of the terrain tile projecting differently on adjacent tiles, so yes, expanding the margins helps. I also believe that only a problem if you have the 'Snap to Terrain' option on, so manually projecting the road curves onto the terrain might be another workaround in the meantime.
Will try but yeah the trick I used worked nicely@@looseEdges, little thing I noticed that the under water side of the ground materials appears above water level when using the Water GeoNode setup. Anyway thanks for taking time to read and reply to people, always nice to see great tools like that improve from people experience :)
Is there any way you could add an edge interpolation tool as a separate modifier? Maybe select the two offending edges and it could bridge between them?
That's an interesting idea, I'll look into it. Dependencies might be a challenge, but if it only changed one vertex in each pair, it could work. It would probably be quite slow, but that should be fine, you'd could have it off most of the time, and only enable it before exporting/rendering.
Thanks! I am not planning to add tools for creating road geometry to the TerraNode library. I do have some unfinished modifiers that will be for making roads, but I think they'll be a separate library or an optional addon to the TerraNode library. I was making them in this series of videos, but that makes progress slow, so I may just finish them off camera at this point: th-cam.com/play/PLid29DRBYBBOvdazcLSbm6YSpdIMD4hPd.html&si=oRMepw2gXqgMWdeL
hello i have a question. so is it possible to change the materials for the land.? i have a potential project where i wanna use anime shaders for materials.
Could you explain a bit more about which rendering modes are supported? I seem to be finding conflicting information, e.g. that Optix does not work, or that this needs Eevee, etc. I didn't find anything in the manual. Thanks.
I used Eevee while developing it, but it will work with cycles. I didn't test the preset materials in cycles so some of them, mainly the water, might need a bit of tweaking. All the modifiers will work with cycles. I am unfamiliar with Optix, but someone commented that it was too much geometry for it to handle or something along those lines. I've been asked this a few times so I added the answer to the Blender Market FAQ with comparison images: blendermarket.com/products/djh-terranode/faq
@@looseEdges Thanks - would love to seem them larger, but I think the cycles render looks great. What lighting setup are you using? Regarding Optix, I don't see why this wouldn't work; it appears to be geared toward more complex scenes, and landscapes can obviously get pretty complex.
@@androidfarmer8863 Yes, they can. I honestly don't know anything about Optix. The lighting setup is super simple, a HDRI at 0.25 strength, and one white Sun at 10 strength. Eevee: danielhickox.com/img/Eevee.png Cycles: danielhickox.com/img/Cycles.png
Allow me to correct the info I had given, on my side OptiX had given me a "Above OSL limit" that said it was prior to me fixing a memory leak on one of MY materials, have tried OptiX since and it works perfectly. @@androidfarmer8863 @looseEdges
Its in those moments I wish you had a Discord Server or something would make communication and just sharing what we did with TerraNode so much easier 😛
@@looseEdges on default in blender if you click left batton mouse on mesh, it selects mesh, but ufter this program became another function. how I can return default function sellecting object(mesh) with click left cnob mouse?
@@vaxs3993 That is strange, TerraNode doesn't change any blender settings. Selection should always be either 'left click' or 'right click' I would check your user preferences under the 'Keymap' tab. It should be the very first setting.
Does it allow easy exportation to game engines? (at least the not instanced objects), I'm really interested in using this instead of Unreal's terrain tools
I'm sure it's possible. I can't say it's easy...yet. However, I also want to use it to make terrain for a game project and figuring out a good workflow for exporting the terrain is next on my todo list.
Hm, I'm not sure what you mean by 'on top' do you mean in a separate object? I don't currently have a modifier for that. The River modifer is added to the terrain base so that it can adjust the height of vertices under the river, it adds a water surface to the terrain object on top of (above) the terrain geo.
@@looseEdges I see what you mean. I was thinking if I used a animated river generator with this addon, would it break the terrain. Same with animated tree generators, etc. Just thinking that this addon would be a great based terrain for some stunning creations.
@@CodenameStudios Ah, I see. The result of the terrain modifiers is a regular mesh so if that addon works on meshes then it should be fine. For animated trees, the scatter modifier instances the source objects, so if the sources are animated then the instances would be too.
Yes, and you can use the Terrain Attributes node in your shader to mask different areas. You might be interested in this video: th-cam.com/video/A8B5AR-R9xk/w-d-xo.html
Hi, it has changed a bit. I released an update a couple of weeks ago that was aimed at fixing problems caused by 4.2 and EEVEE Next, so make sure you have the latest version (v5). In the video about the Update, I discuss the new EEVEE settings a bit: th-cam.com/video/i61LDJdh0ug/w-d-xo.htmlsi=NlW0doVi-6-H7L2n&t=435. If you have questions about more settings after that, let me know. I'd be happy to share a .blend or a screenshot with all the EEVEE settings I've been using and share that with you.
I'd remove the tiling feature entirely. It's just unnecessarily complicates things, it doesn't add anything useful, and the tears along the seams are a pretty big deal (especially if you plan to use the generated terrain in like a game engine or something). If you really need to tile it, it's really not that hard to cut it up manually once you're done generating your terrain.
@@looseEdges Exactly my point. You can just make the base the size you want in the first place, what's the point of tiling? What's the usecae? Just adding a feature for the sake of adding a feature is kinda pointless, especially if it doesn't work/buggy. But hey, that's just me. We can agree to disagree.
I added the feature to improve my productivity when using the tool, it has a drawback which is that the tileing isn't perfect when using erode. But the benefit of being able to interactively edit a terrain that is split into tiles outweighs that drawback in my opinion. If you have a 500x500 meter terrain and change settings on a modifier, it can take several seconds to apply the change. If you edit a 50x50 meter terrain, it updates almost instantly. @@janosszabo98
@@janosszabo98 I see what you mean. That's why I like the "Auto Terrainer" addon. You can just extrude an edge and it will just...work, lol. Only reason I was thinking of purchasing this addon because it's an all-in-one for me. As I was asking in the comment section on adding animated stuff like trees moving or a flowing river, would that "break" the addon.
@@looseEdges The size of the mesh doesn't matter much, it's the resolution (subdiv) is what slows you down, but I get your point. I'd still rather see the whole picture and maybe lower the resolution while working on it.
This looks amazing. Seems like the most complete terrain generator for Blender
Hey, it's me again! I managed to improve the performance on the Tree Scatter (could work with others).
I used the "Realize Intances" node right before the group output, it essentially merges all instances in as one object, it only reduces the amount of objects, the polys and materials are the same, but the simple fact of having many objects was killing performance.
The good thing is that it's neither destructive nor hard to setup, in one of my scenes I went from 130k objects to 1 object on an area of 300x400 meters (trees only).
PS: I said it could work for others but it already does, didn't had noticed you shared the same GeoNode between the different scatters
Wow! I just tested this and it can be a huge improvement for viewport performance. Technically it makes the modifier itself slower, because it has to merge everything, but once that's done the scene draws much faster. I'll have to experiment with this a bit more and see how it effects rendertimes, etc. but adding a 'Realize' checkbox to the modifier is a good idea.
Happy to help! I had encountered this node when I was trying to help my performance on my interior GeoNode setup with corridors and a lot of instanced parts.@@looseEdges
Very handy. Looking forward to using this along with DJH nodes. You make the coolest promo videos for your products and have by far the best organized and clear documentation on your site. This was one of those "full confidence" purchase decisions.
love the add-on by the way, i would love to see the ability to add snow and ice the scene.
Thanks! To make a winter scene, I would mainly use a different material. I might try to add one in a future update, in the meantime you might check this video about custom materials:
th-cam.com/video/A8B5AR-R9xk/w-d-xo.html
This is really amazing. I used DAZ in Unreal but this Terra Node is somewhat similar or more convenient to make terrain at your wish. Couple it with G-scatter or Ngon addon and it will give you proper exterior in no time.
This is an awesome tool, and easy to work with. Thank you so much.
Glad to hear it! You're welcome!
Dear, The problem is that you are explaining to experts. The problem is what about beginners? I have spent the whole day learning how to install it and find the libraries since I bought the add-on. You are explaining like someone who is talking to himself. so we need to explain it step by step. thanks for your great efforts
I wasn't able to use Terranode. this tutorial will help me. Thanks
This is incredible, dude.
This is awesome! got as soon as I discovered it and works flawlessly! The only issue I am having is that for some reason I can't make it interact properly with lights and hdri (cycles)
could be that I am doing something terribly wrong
Glad to hear it! That is odd, I just did a quick test and a terrain with cycles seems to be working fine for me. Was there a specific material that was causing the issue?
Also feel free to join my discord server, ( discord.gg/EuUHutzrJr ), that way you could share pictures etc.
Scattering seems still very labor intensive. Please make another tut on this part.
This is amazing. Bought it as soon as I saw the demo! Quick question: I can scatter biomes onto the TerraNode landscape with GeoScatter quite nicely, however it doesn't respect the masking in TN. Can you think of any way to get access to the masks being generated by TN so I can use them to cull biomes in Geo-Scatter? Thanks
All the extra TerraNode data is saved as named attributes. I'm not familiar with the GeoScatter workflow, so I'm afraid I can't speak to that much. However, if it uses Geometry Nodes, I'd reccomend taking a look inside my Terrain Attributes Shader Node. There, you can see all the attributes that can be read from a TerraNode terrain. A copy of that shader node, made for GeoNodes, would give you access to all the terrain data.
@@looseEdges thanks. I’ll see if I can work it out.
Can you pls make tutorial of these geometry nodes 🙏
Both the workflow and the final result looks fantastic. I hope you will find a way to export the terrain to Unity. Can you please notify in some way whenever you manage to?
Thanks! Yes, exporting the result is what I want to experiment with next. I will probably make a video about that once I have figured out a good workflow.
Looks amazing, just kinda sad that the road erode does like the Erode Modifier, the miss aligned height, something that doesn't seem to happen on your video.
Okay managed to get rid of it but had to go with 70m instead of your 55m and cut it down to 50m. Also so you know, Optix Rendering isn't possible with your addon, way too complex for it.
Ah bummer, I thought I had eliminated that problem, I'll look into it again and try to improve it. It's caused by points of the road curve that are beyond the extents of the terrain tile projecting differently on adjacent tiles, so yes, expanding the margins helps. I also believe that only a problem if you have the 'Snap to Terrain' option on, so manually projecting the road curves onto the terrain might be another workaround in the meantime.
Will try but yeah the trick I used worked nicely@@looseEdges, little thing I noticed that the under water side of the ground materials appears above water level when using the Water GeoNode setup.
Anyway thanks for taking time to read and reply to people, always nice to see great tools like that improve from people experience :)
Is there any way you could add an edge interpolation tool as a separate modifier? Maybe select the two offending edges and it could bridge between them?
That's an interesting idea, I'll look into it. Dependencies might be a challenge, but if it only changed one vertex in each pair, it could work. It would probably be quite slow, but that should be fine, you'd could have it off most of the time, and only enable it before exporting/rendering.
Looking good!
Are you planning on adding actual road system, not just colored terrain?
Thanks! I am not planning to add tools for creating road geometry to the TerraNode library. I do have some unfinished modifiers that will be for making roads, but I think they'll be a separate library or an optional addon to the TerraNode library.
I was making them in this series of videos, but that makes progress slow, so I may just finish them off camera at this point:
th-cam.com/play/PLid29DRBYBBOvdazcLSbm6YSpdIMD4hPd.html&si=oRMepw2gXqgMWdeL
Nice work
hello i have a question. so is it possible to change the materials for the land.? i have a potential project where i wanna use anime shaders for materials.
Yes, it is possible. I talk about how to customize the materials in this video: th-cam.com/video/A8B5AR-R9xk/w-d-xo.htmlsi=faGCQINaVEqrDqAz
Could you explain a bit more about which rendering modes are supported? I seem to be finding conflicting information, e.g. that Optix does not work, or that this needs Eevee, etc. I didn't find anything in the manual. Thanks.
I used Eevee while developing it, but it will work with cycles. I didn't test the preset materials in cycles so some of them, mainly the water, might need a bit of tweaking. All the modifiers will work with cycles. I am unfamiliar with Optix, but someone commented that it was too much geometry for it to handle or something along those lines.
I've been asked this a few times so I added the answer to the Blender Market FAQ with comparison images: blendermarket.com/products/djh-terranode/faq
@@looseEdges Thanks - would love to seem them larger, but I think the cycles render looks great. What lighting setup are you using?
Regarding Optix, I don't see why this wouldn't work; it appears to be geared toward more complex scenes, and landscapes can obviously get pretty complex.
@@androidfarmer8863 Yes, they can. I honestly don't know anything about Optix. The lighting setup is super simple, a HDRI at 0.25 strength, and one white Sun at 10 strength.
Eevee: danielhickox.com/img/Eevee.png
Cycles: danielhickox.com/img/Cycles.png
Allow me to correct the info I had given, on my side OptiX had given me a "Above OSL limit" that said it was prior to me fixing a memory leak on one of MY materials, have tried OptiX since and it works perfectly. @@androidfarmer8863 @looseEdges
Its in those moments I wish you had a Discord Server or something would make communication and just sharing what we did with TerraNode so much easier 😛
tell me please how to return "left cnob sellect" mesh
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking.
@@looseEdges on default in blender if you click left batton mouse on mesh,
it selects mesh, but ufter this program became another function.
how I can return default function sellecting object(mesh) with click left cnob mouse?
@@vaxs3993 That is strange, TerraNode doesn't change any blender settings. Selection should always be either 'left click' or 'right click' I would check your user preferences under the 'Keymap' tab. It should be the very first setting.
@@looseEdges thanck you ! in "keymap" tab is "window' tab and there is "restore" cnob. thank you very much !
Does it allow easy exportation to game engines? (at least the not instanced objects), I'm really interested in using this instead of Unreal's terrain tools
I'm sure it's possible. I can't say it's easy...yet. However, I also want to use it to make terrain for a game project and figuring out a good workflow for exporting the terrain is next on my todo list.
Can you add a river (animated) generator on top of the terrain?
Hm, I'm not sure what you mean by 'on top' do you mean in a separate object? I don't currently have a modifier for that. The River modifer is added to the terrain base so that it can adjust the height of vertices under the river, it adds a water surface to the terrain object on top of (above) the terrain geo.
@@looseEdges I see what you mean. I was thinking if I used a animated river generator with this addon, would it break the terrain. Same with animated tree generators, etc. Just thinking that this addon would be a great based terrain for some stunning creations.
@@CodenameStudios Ah, I see. The result of the terrain modifiers is a regular mesh so if that addon works on meshes then it should be fine. For animated trees, the scatter modifier instances the source objects, so if the sources are animated then the instances would be too.
Can i import custom heightmap?
Yes, there is a heightmap modifer, you would add a terrain base and then stack the heightmap modifier on top of it.
Is it possible to use my materials?
Yes, and you can use the Terrain Attributes node in your shader to mask different areas. You might be interested in this video: th-cam.com/video/A8B5AR-R9xk/w-d-xo.html
dose it work with Cycles ?
Yes, it works with cycles. I didn't test the preset materials in cycles so they might need a little tweaking, but the modifiers will all work.
cool thanks @@looseEdges 😄
What would be the ideal EEVEE settings in 4.2? It doesn't look anything like your video th-cam.com/video/bkrU_GwNxgY/w-d-xo.html.
Hi, it has changed a bit. I released an update a couple of weeks ago that was aimed at fixing problems caused by 4.2 and EEVEE Next, so make sure you have the latest version (v5). In the video about the Update, I discuss the new EEVEE settings a bit: th-cam.com/video/i61LDJdh0ug/w-d-xo.htmlsi=NlW0doVi-6-H7L2n&t=435. If you have questions about more settings after that, let me know. I'd be happy to share a .blend or a screenshot with all the EEVEE settings I've been using and share that with you.
I'd remove the tiling feature entirely. It's just unnecessarily complicates things, it doesn't add anything useful, and the tears along the seams are a pretty big deal (especially if you plan to use the generated terrain in like a game engine or something). If you really need to tile it, it's really not that hard to cut it up manually once you're done generating your terrain.
I respectfully disagree, but if you don't want to use the tileing feature, you can just make a large base and ignore it.
@@looseEdges Exactly my point. You can just make the base the size you want in the first place, what's the point of tiling? What's the usecae? Just adding a feature for the sake of adding a feature is kinda pointless, especially if it doesn't work/buggy. But hey, that's just me. We can agree to disagree.
I added the feature to improve my productivity when using the tool, it has a drawback which is that the tileing isn't perfect when using erode. But the benefit of being able to interactively edit a terrain that is split into tiles outweighs that drawback in my opinion. If you have a 500x500 meter terrain and change settings on a modifier, it can take several seconds to apply the change. If you edit a 50x50 meter terrain, it updates almost instantly. @@janosszabo98
@@janosszabo98 I see what you mean. That's why I like the "Auto Terrainer" addon. You can just extrude an edge and it will just...work, lol. Only reason I was thinking of purchasing this addon because it's an all-in-one for me. As I was asking in the comment section on adding animated stuff like trees moving or a flowing river, would that "break" the addon.
@@looseEdges The size of the mesh doesn't matter much, it's the resolution (subdiv) is what slows you down, but I get your point. I'd still rather see the whole picture and maybe lower the resolution while working on it.